BCC casino program teaches students ins and outs of gaming industry

FALL RIVER — If David Degrace had bet real money, he could have walked away from Paul Robillard’s blackjack table with $400 worth of chips. He started off with $60.

While the bets weren’t real, the blackjack table was. And for the students who were playing the roles of dealers standing behind the semicircle-shaped table set up in the lobby of the Commonwealth College Center at Bristol Community College on Thursday afternoon, it was a chance to gain some gaming industry experience.

The student dealers dealt to other students, who sat around the outside of the semi-circle table, played their cards and placed “bets.”

Other curious students stopped by to look over their peers’ shoulders.

The experience was part of Robillard’s class on introduction to casino operations. He's taught the class during the past few years at BCC as part of the school’s Casino Operations and Gaming Services Career associate’s degree program. Robillard coordinates BCC’s casino program, which prepares students for the many facets of gaming operations.

“I want to work in casinos,” said BCC student Kathy Benevides before dealing a few hands Thursday. Benevides was a stay-at-home mother with an accounting degree before she decided to go back to school.

Aware that there are competing proposals for casinos throughout southeastern Massachusetts — for Fall River, New Bedford and Taunton — Benevides said the location of that new casino, whenever it does finally come, is not a big concern for her.

“I’d be fine with anywhere in the area,” Benevides said.

Fellow casino operations student Brian Melemed of Taunton agreed.

“As long as it’s here, it’s another place to work. All of those places are easy to get to,” said Melemed, who currently works at Twin River Casino in Lincoln, R.I.

BCC’s program began after the passage of the state’s Expanded Gaming Act in 2011. Around the time of that decision, each of the state’s 15 community colleges signed agreements with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission that they would provide training for those who want to work in the industry, said Robillard, who more than two decades ago directed the Fall River branch of the American Red Cross.

Robillard later took a job for a few years as a blackjack dealer at Foxwoods in Connecticut after a period of unemployment in the early 1990s. He taught casino management at the former Katherine Gibbs School in Cranston, R.I., and said jobs in the industry will grow, even as area communities await a decision from the Gaming Commission on a casino license.

Enrollment in BCC’s program is already growing. Last fall, the program had five students. The program also recently received a donation of five blackjack tables, one roulette table, a craps table, two poker tables, as well as “hundreds of decks of cards” and sets of poker chips, Robillard said. They came from the Katherine Gibbs School.

Since the announcement of a joint proposal between Fall River and Foxwoods for a casino at the New Harbour Mall site, enrollment has doubled, Robillard said.